Hobo Soul Will Rise
by SavvyIthny
Summary: ... She saw him once before in the moment when he realized he was going to die. She once watched the knowledge of his own imminent death cover his face. She saw it the third time she ever worked with him, and has never let herself forget it. Kensi knows her partner's not the weakest link, and this time he's got a team who's got his back.


**Title: Hobo Soul Will Rise  
Rating: PG13 for injury, afterman  
Character(s): Kensi, Callen, Deeks  
Disclaimer: Not mine. Easier to ask forgiveness than get permission.  
Author's Notes:  
Summary: They think he's the weak link, but Kensi knows her partner's stronger than they think **

_"Eric, I've got Michelle," _she called into the open link to Ops. "I don't know what's up, but Sidorov's goons just tried to take her out."

The answer that crackled back in her ear caused a wave of cold fear to wash over her, leaving her skin prickling with goosebumps. "Kensi, Sam's been made. Get back here now!"

Only someone very familiar with the usual state of affairs in Ops would have been able to tell that anything was wrong, but Kensi saw, on her arrival, that things were very wrong indeed. Nell and Eric were at their regular stations, Hetty was deep in conversation with Granger in the corner, and Callen was leaning over Eric's shoulder, watching him rearrange search strategies. A rapidly flickering display on the big screen indicated that Kaleidoscope was running some kind of intensive search.

Callen spun around at the sound of her boots at the door and moved quickly to take her by the shoulders. She only had time to gasp "Sam? Deeks?" before G was talking, talking over her question, looking her directly in the eyes so she could see the pain he was holding back.

"Janvier tipped off Sidorov, but only about Sam. We lost Sam's signal, Deeks said he was going in, and we lost his. By the time I got to the house they were gone."

The prickle of cold across her skin returned. The room felt airless and the background sound seemed to drop away. Gone. In her mind, she saw Deeks sprawled across the patio next to the pool at Sidorov's house, blood spreading ever wider around him. Did they shoot Sam first? Did he know he'd lost before he died, or was Sam the one who watched a fellow agent fall dead before his own end?

"Gone?" she gasped. "Really gone, or no time for EMT's gone? Did he .. was he...?"

She couldn't finish the thought. _Did he say anything? Was he conscious? Did he ask for me? _

Callen reeled back slightly. "Oh, Jesus, Kens, no. They were _gone._ Sidorov took them. We don't know if they're alive, but they might not be dead yet."

Not dead yet. There was some hope.

"G, why the hell didn't Sidorov just kill them both? Why go to the trouble? He can't think they'd be bargaining chips - he has to know the government isn't going to trade two lives for the thousands he might kill or injure with those devices."

Kensi realized Hetty had come up behind her. "All he knows, Miss Blye, is that Sam - David - is some kind of agent. And that Mr. Deeks was associated with him in some way. The deal Janvier brokered is a good one, with familiar players. We suspect Sidorov will try to ascertain what agency Sam is working for and if any of his other people are working with him."

Kensi was still rolling that "ascertain" over in her mind when Granger added, "He'll want to go ahead with Janvier's deal if it hasn't been compromised, and he'll want to move the bombs to a new hiding place if it has."

Ascertain. _Ascertain_. A clean, nice, word for what they were trying to tell her. She turned back to Callen.

"So you're telling me that right now our partners are being tortured for information by a ruthless Russian arms dealer."

Callen's expression was grim. "Yes. And the first person he's going to be asking them about? Is Quinn."

(...)

Hours later, LAPD located Kensi's SRX abandoned behind a warehouse. Callen drove her to retrieve it and process it for evidence. Eric had already determined there were no nearby cameras, but Kensi and G, canvassing the neighborhood, quickly learned there were no human witnesses either.

She approached the car at last with trepidation. It looked unmarked, just as she'd left it next to him earlier. With a sigh, she popped the trunk and found her things still there, untouched.

Callen gestured at the car door, and when Kensi hesitated, he pulled open the driver's side door himself, leaned in, and ran his hands across the seat and under the dash. She took a deep breath, opened a door herself, and climbed into the backseat.

"Nothing up here," G reported. "Sidorov must have had one of his men dump the car. There's no blood, no sign of a struggle..." His eyes met Kensi's in the rear view mirror, and he turned to face her across the front seat. "You holding up?" he asked, quietly.

She nodded - barely so, but enough to tell Callen she was still in the game. She had to be. "Its just - it still smells like him..." She stopped, remembering all the times she'd complained, loudly, to G and Sam. "I can smell the ocean. And coconuts." _And rosemary, from that damn hippie herb shampoo he kept trying to get me to try. Keeps trying. Not kept. _

_"_All I smell is chocolate, Kens. I think you've let something melt in your console again." She knew G was trying to preserve some sense of normalcy, to tease her like her teammates always did.

Her laugh caught in her throat, turned into a sob. "G, we have to find them. While we're wasting time on this, they could be ..." she let the thought trail off, unwilling to put their partners' likely fate into words.

Callen knew what she couldn't say. "Kens, we'll get them. And Sam's tough. He's been interrogated before. He's been trained, and... ."

"And what, G? Sam's tough, Sam's a SEAL, but he's not the only one they have!"

He gripped her shoulder. "We'll find them. We'll get them back before ...before they ... we'll get them back. And Sam's the one whose cover was blown, the one they know has been working with their team. They'll be trying to get him to talk, not Deeks, so he won't ..."

"Won't what, Callen? Won't betray the team? Won't break, because he's not Sam?"

She could read in his eyes what he wasn't saying. He did think her partner was weak, would break, would fail them.

But Kensi knew she'd seen what Callen never had. It's not just that after working with Deeks for years now, she knew how he could switch in an instant from being a ridiculous goof to being a deadly professional.

It's that she saw him once before in the moment when he realized he was going to die. She once watched the knowledge of his own imminent death cover his face. She saw it the third time she ever worked with him, and has never let herself forget it.

While Callen was bluffing his way into a building full of human traffickers, while Sam was sliding silently around to the side entrance, Kensi had watched the scene inside the warehouse unfold. Through her rifle scope, she had a clear view as Lazik leaned to whisper in Deeks ear, and she had seen Deeks turn his face away, up to the filthy window, as though he wanted one last look at the sky before these goons killed him.

For a moment, she'd thought he was looking at her, looking _for_ her. But he didn't know she was there. Couldn't have known _anyone_ was there. His gaze in that moment was not a plea for intervention, but an acceptance of his fate.

_I lift my eyes up to the hills; where does my help come from?_

He'd known - she'd known he'd known - that he was alone. As far as he knew, no one had any idea where he was. He had no idea that the NCIS team were coming to his aid. He'd worked with them _twice_. He hadn't planned this meeting with them. The first time he worked with the team, he'd told them he worked alone.

And she saw him understand that he was about to die, alone. Probably painfully. And she saw him set his jaw and turn to meet that death with bleak, defiant, humor. She saw him look into his killers eyes and wait for a beating, a breaking, an _ending_.

They'd gone into danger together many times since then. And Kensi was never in a position to see that calm acceptance of certain death again. But she always remembered that it was there. And he proved it with actions in case after case. He fought for others, he defended _her_ life with a ferocity that surprised people who misjudged his exterior, but she sometimes wondered if he did it precisely because he was more comfortable with the idea of his own death than with the possibility of hers.

Whatever Callen thought of her partner, Kensi knew in her gut that the man she knew, who had grown from a boy-child who'd been forced to take horrifying actions far beyond his years, was not going to break easily.

"Kensi? Kensi!" Callen was back outside the car, gesturing towards his own. "Let the forensics team finish up here. They might find some trace that will give us something to go on."

She backed out the door, pulling herself slowly upright, breathing deeply as she did. _Salt and oil and the warmth of life. Beeswax and mint on his lips on hers and her nose full of the smell of him as he pulled away..._

She swivelled to meet Callen's gaze, head on.

Their partners were waiting for them, somewhere. And this time, Deeks surely knew that people were looking for him, that the full force and power of a federal agency was now working to find him and bring him home. She saw Callen catch the intensity of her own resolution, nodding at her in agreement as she spoke.

"We'll get them back."

(...)

It wasn't Kaleidoscope or Eric's special search algorithms or traffic cameras that finally broke the case, in the end. It was old fashioned policing - paper and clues and footwork.

The young NCIS forensics tech who had been processing the pile of bloodied motorcycle leathers recently worn by Sidorov's employee Veronica approached Kensi in the predawn hours. Tentatively, she held up a handful of evidence bags. "Agent Blye, I wondered if these might mean something."

_These _were a stack of receipts, wrinkled from being stuffed into a pocket. Multiple receipts to the same cheap sandwich shop over the last few days.

The shop owner recognized the woman's picture, described the man who had accompanied her several times, and then offered that he'd seen the man, though not the woman, just a few hours before. Tax records and deeds indicated that a nearby warehouse was owned by a man known to be connected to a Russian crime syndicate. It was supposedly vacant, yet local vagrants reported truck traffic over the last few weeks, and increased car traffic more recently.

The bust was the largest Kensi had ever been a part of. This operation could never have been just her and Callen charging in to save the day - but they had to fight to be included at all. Sabatino's task force was highly trained, massively armed, and tightly coordinated, and they grudgingly allowed the OSP agents to suit up and accompany them into the building. _Follow_ them into the building, specifically.

_All these people have your back, partner. Hold on, Deeks, we're coming for you._

The raid itself was almost anti-climactic. Once the building had been located, the technology had been able to play a role. Heat sensors, satellite images, street cameras - all had been used to position their people and plan the operation. Sidorov's people were surprised, outnumbered, outgunned.

And Kensi may have had to be the last through every door, but as the agents ahead of her swung their attention from doorway to doorway, looking for active shooters, she was the first to spot the silent, still figure in the corner.

She shouted her success into her comm, rushed to crouch next to his chair.

He looked up at her with dawning recognition, and she saw the moment he realized he _wasn't _going to die, that help had arrived. She heard more shouting as the team spotted Sam, heard calls for paramedics over her comm, but her eyes were only on her partner as she yanked the stained rags he'd been gagged with from his mouth. He cried out, retched and spat blood, but then managed a strained half-smile.

"You catch the bad guys? his swollen mouth blurred the words. "'Cause I've been sitting here hoping you were out avenging my honor."

One of Sabatino's agents was at her other side, cutting the ties that pinned Deeks to the chair. As the last tie gave way, her partner slumped over bonelessly against her, forcing her to scramble to lower him more gently to the ground. She pulled his collar away from his neck, pressing her fingers against his pulse point.

"We let Sabatino finish them off," she told him, reassured by the steady pounding of his heartbeat against her fingers. "My priority was getting you back."

He laughed, almost, and raised one hand to cover hers at his neck. "Hah. That's my girl." He coughed, spitting more blood, and winced. "I have to pee. It's possible I already did."

She snorted a laugh, but it caught in her throat and turned into a sob. He lifted his hand to run a thumb across her cheek, wiping at the tears that were betraying her, mumbling "Don't cry, Kensalina. You got me back." His hand dropped away, falling back to the floor, as his eyes drifted shut. "You got me," he trailed off.

"Yeah, I got you, Deeks. I got you. I got you." And then she was shouldered aside by a group of EMTs with their bags and a stretcher. Callen was at her side, pulling her away, telling her "Let them work, Kens, they'll take care of him."

EMTs were clustered around her partner, shining lights at his eyes, running hands down his limbs, gently probing along his jaw and neck. She saw him wince as they touched him, keeping his eyes screwed shut as he answered their questions. Then his eyes opened. "I'm okay, guys," he said thickly, "I'm okay." He was looking around, looking for her, until he caught her gaze and met it.

"Not gonna die today. I made a promise."

* * *

Notes:

In my head this was more than a missing scene/continuation drabble, but words refused to come. In the interest of getting it out there before the season premiere, in the hopes of breaking writers block on a different project, I'm sending it out into the universe.

Only someone who only looks at surfaces would think Deeks is "The weak one."

Title: "... my hobo soul will rise, I'm not afraid to die." from Gillian Welch, "Not afraid to die."


End file.
